16 SOULS Read online

  He pressed the #1 VHF radio button again and hit the transmit button himself.

  “Approach, whoever I’m talking to…there’s no time for debate. I need the unplowed snow to slow me down and I need the length, and I need that ILS turned on right this second.”

  “Ah, Twelve, roger, we’re doing it. It takes the ILS time to come on line.”

  “Approach, it will take about five minutes I figure, for us to come around for a stabilized approach. Give me maximum on the runway lights, approach lights, the rabbit, and the VASI’s, all of it.”

  “They may be snow covered, sir.”

  “I know that. Please do it. All equipment clear?”

  A brief pause marked the controller’s relay of the question which resulted in a quick response.

  “Roger, Twelve, the tower advises the runway is clear of everything but snow. Turn right now, one eight zero, climb to and maintain eight thousand.”

  “We’ll stay at seven thousand, Approach.”

  “Roger…seven thousand. I’ll turn you for the intercept in about five miles.”

  Ryan was looking at him with a feral expression and Marty glanced to his right long enough to acknowledge it.

  “What, Ryan?”

  “We’re burning fuel now from the left main, Marty. Our balance is going to be affected quickly.”

  “We need five minutes. Do we have five minutes?”

  “God, I hope so. You really think this will work?”

  “Same answer. God, I hope so! But, yes, it’s what we both were missing. Who gives a rat’s ass what runway is formally open? We have emergency authority to land anywhere.”

  “Can the gear take it? This is big landing gear! Maybe we should land gear up?”

  “No. If the gear can’t handle it, we’ll still be decelerating on a very long runway with no dropoff at the end. Dammit, why didn’t I think of this before?”

  “Regal Twelve, turn right now to a heading of three one zero, maintain seven thousand feet to intercept the localizer, and you’re of course cleared for the Cat 3 approach to Runway 36 R as requested. Be advised our ILS monitors are not indicating a stable signal yet.”

  “We have it up here, and we’ve got GPS backup. We’re good.”

  “The emergency equipment will be relocating from Runway Seven.”

  “Roger.”

  Marty carefully banked the 757 fifteen degrees to the right, holding the turn until on a 45 degree intercept for the final approach course. He could see the localizer coming alive and beginning to move across the screen, the artificially created horizontal situation indicator showing them rapidly approaching the centerline of the runway as projected out many miles by the instrument landing system transmitter. He began another bank to the right, and rolled out on centerline.

  “Intercepting localizer.”

  “How do you want to do this, Marty? As a monitored approach?”

  “No time. I’ll hand fly. Read the radio altimeter all the way down and help me find the runway. We’ll lower the gear in three miles. Give me landing lights at two hundred feet.”

  “Speed is two thirty, on the nose,” Ryan announced. “Flaps are still where we left them.”

  “Got it. Bringing the combiner back down,” he said as he pulled the heads up display back into position in front of his eyes.

  With both pilots used to approach speeds being somewhere between eighty to a hundred knots slower, the rapid approach of the normal descent point was startling, as if they were flying a high speed jet fighter instead of a lumbering transport.

  “Give me the gear, now!” Marty called, realizing he was about to overrun the descent point. “Gear down, before landing checklist.”

  Ryan responded immediately, the gear handle snapping down and the sound of the huge main landing gear and nose gear rumbling into place, followed by three green lights on the panel.

  “Down and three green,”

  “Before landing checklist,” Marty ordered, and Ryan began rapidly going through the sequence.

  “Checklist complete, one thousand feet above, speed two thirty.”

  “Roger.”

  “You’re a bit above the glide slope!”

  ‘I know it. I’m going to stay in a right crab against this right crosswind until just over the runway, then I’ll kick it out and align us.” Marty’s hand pulled the two throttles back a bit more, his eyes darting between the attitude indicator, HSI, and airspeed as he gently lowered the nose to increase the rate of descent.

  “Still one dot high on the glide slope,” Ryan called out.

  “I know it.”

  “Seven hundred above, two miles to go.”

  “Gear and flaps rechecked down?” Marty asked.

  “Gear down and locked, flaps just beyond ten degrees.”

  Marty was working diligently to keep the speed on target at 230 while checking to make sure the deck angle of the 757 was at least two degrees nose up. The main gear had to touch first, but any flaring of the aircraft, and raising of the nose just over the runway, with such excessive speed would simply fly them back into the air. Yet the descent rate was just over twelve hundred feet per minute which would mean a very hard landing that the gear could probably take, but it would be a crunching arrival at best, and if too hard, the Beech fuselage would undoubtedly be broken loose.

  “Five hundred feet, just over a mile. I’ve got some fuzzy lights ahead and the snowfall is decreasing.”

  “Roger.”

  “Three hundred feet. Half a dot high on the glide slope. Two hundred feet above, landing lights coming on.”

  Ryan left hand had been resting on the landing lights and he snapped them on now, revealing a torrent of snow streaming past the windscreen.

  “Approach lights in sight,” Ryan added, “…slightly to the left! One hundred feet”

  Marty’s focus had been on the projected green numbers and lines in the combiner, but with the landing lights came the streaking snow and the faint glow of a sequenced line of strobes called the rabbit, as well as the white runway lights which were broadening and moving toward them like outstretched arms, the dark of the runway between them, suddenly illuminated by something that made no sense at first.

  Two lights, just ahead, right in the middle of his intended touchdown and nowhere near the runway lights or any other rational explanation except that maybe there was still a snow plow on the runway and they were aiming right for it at over two hundred thirty knots!

  Marty was still crabbing to the right and had just begun to push the left rudder while holding the right wing down, but suddenly the entire picture changed.

  “Fifty feet, over the threshold,” Ryan said.

  Time dilated in Marty’s mind, his left hand translating the only rational action which was to roll the aircraft back to the left enough to let the right main gear pass over what he could see now was slightly to the right of the runway centerline. He pulsed the yoke back slightly as he rolled left, with no time to explain to anyone, and when the lights of whatever was below had flashed beneath them with no feeling of impact, he began to move the yoke back, unprepared for the heavy gust of wind that was suddenly raising the right wing and rolling him much further left than he’d panned. A quick pulse to the right with the yoke wasn’t enough, and with growing horror he felt the left wingtip drag onto the runway surface, the drag pivoting the 757’s fuselage left as the left main gear crunched onto the runway partly sideways, followed by the right main gear, and now it was a frantic attempt to kick the aircraft back to the right and keep the right wing from contacting the runway, but every attempt to regain control was too little too late as the aircraft went fully sideways, rolling to the right, the right wing now skidding along the surface, the sound of tearing metal and impossibly confusing gyrations lasting for an eternity
and exceeding anything he could influence as his world skidded along the snow covered surface shedding parts.

  Marty’s consciousness returned to the courtroom. There were no sounds around him, all eyes looking in his direction, and his words still effectively echoing around the heads of everyone present.

  He could see his attorney standing quietly by the defense table, watching him with a slightly stunned expression, and he was greatly relieved when she shook herself into motion and stepped forward.

  “Thank you, Captain. I have a few more questions.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded at her.

  “When all the motion had ceased, what do you recall?”

  He exhaled and shook his head. “It was pitch black and very cold and I heard sirens everywhere. We were on our right side…the cockpit section…and I didn’t know the fuselage had broken in two. Ryan was knocked out, but I could see he was breathing. I had no idea who was still with us, where anyone was, and I guess I blacked out before they pulled us out of the wreckage.”

  “Captain, if no headlights had appeared in front of you, would the crash have happened?”

  Richardson had shaken himself into action as well and was on his feet to object.

  “Objection. Speculation.”

  “Overruled, counsellor,” the judge replied. “I think this man is perhaps the most qualified individual in all Christendom to answer that. The witness may answer.”

  “No, we would not have crashed. It was going to be a hard landing, but I could have kept it under control, and even if the Beech fuselage had detached at that point, they had a long, flat surface ahead in which to safely decelerate. So we would all have been okay.”

  “So, Captain, the presence of those headlights was a material factor?”

  “Yes. If I hadn’t needed to avoid that snowplow, or whatever it was, I would have been able to safely align the aircraft with the runway as I had started doing, and then using the snowpack to decelerate us.”

  “Did your selection of 36 Right mean that there was an alternative to the two choices Mr. Butterfield had considered?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Mr. Butterfield, according to his testimony, said that there were essentially two choices that he had heard from you. One was to slow the aircraft to normal or near normal landing speed so as to be able to land on Runway Seven and stop before the drop-off to the east, and the second choice was to maintain your speed in the hope that the Beech fuselage and the occupants would not fall off the wing.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, in both your sat phone conversations with Mr. Butterfield, your choice was either to slow or maintain speed, but landing on Runway 7 was the only choice, correct?”

  “That’s right. My idea about landing on Runway Three Six Right provided a third potential solution, and I knew it was the key to getting all of us down without anyone dying. I had been fixated…bore-sighted, so to speak…about landing on Runway Seven. So…yes, I made the decision to reject the course of action Butterfield wanted me to reject, if that makes sense.

  “So you did not, in fact, knowingly do anything to cause the death of anyone.”

  Richardson was on his feet again, this time sounding almost wounded.

  “Objection, Your Honor, if that isn’t leading the witness, I don’t know what is!”

  “Sustained. Counselor, rephrase the question.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Okay, Captain Mitchell, in choosing to land on Runway Three Six Right, did you knowingly do anything to cause the death of another human being?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “No further questions.”

  It was disturbing, Judith thought that Grant Richardson asked to delay his cross examination of Marty Mitchell. Obviously the defendant was going to be available the remainder of the trial, but it was the unknown strategy behind his request that concerned her.

  Gonzales had approved a fifteen minute recess as Marty left the stand, yet it seemed like a mere heartbeat before everyone was back. There was only one remaining witness on Judith’s list, but this one, she figured, would be a considerable surprise to the jury, and indeed, the eyes of every juror went to the door of the courtroom as an attractive woman walking hesitantly with a cane moved with obvious pain and deliberation toward the front.

  “Your Honor,” Judith said, “the defense calls Captain Michelle Whittier to the stand.”

  Hyatt Regency Lounge

  The small gathering in the hotel bar just after 6 pm consisted of Marty Mitchell and his legal team, and was supposed to have included the captain of Mountaineer 2612. But after testifying, Michelle Whittier had been thoroughly exhausted and begged off, her ride home provided by a chauffeured town car with Judith’s heartfelt appreciation.

  “She’s in the middle of physical therapy, and as you saw, she’s struggling.”

  “I thought she was wonderful,” Marty said.

  Judith nodded in agreement. “She may not have contributed anything to the legal analysis, but she connected with the jurors big time. You agree, Joel?”

  “Completely,” he responded. “All sixteen humans on that Beech were saved by this man’s refusal to just follow orders, and there was one of them in the flesh in that courtroom, a brave woman who would be dead and buried except for Captain Mitchell’s perseverance. In essence, what this jury needs to feel is that a vote to convict Marty here is a statement to that young woman that she should have been abandoned and killed. That’s powerful. Richardson took a hit with her, and you noticed his cross examination was respectful and essentially useless. To ask the jurors to reward Marty for saving her life and that of all the others by throwing him in prison is unspeakably horrific. By the way, was she the worst injured?”

  “Yes,” Judith replied. “There was a neck injury to a male passenger caused by the collision, but the amazing thing was, when the 757 began to go sideways at that blazing speed, the Beech fuselage skidded off pretty much cleanly and rocketed right down the runway and it didn’t tumble. The Boeing actually went tumbling ahead of it. The Beech fuselage collided with part of the disintegrating right wing of the 757, or that would have been the only injury. Michelle would have walked away.”

  “But she’ll make a complete recovery?” Joel asked.

  “She was in a coma for two months. There was a massive concussion and a closed skull injury, and when she awoke, she couldn’t walk or talk coherently, so she’s made incredible progress and I’m told will eventually fly again.”

  Judith could sense Joel was holding back a less optimistic analysis of the day for a private conversation later. She could see it in his eyes, despite the broad smile. But providing some much needed relief for Marty right now was more important, and she repeated her earlier compliments about his self-control, and the cool authority he had projected throughout the time on the stand.”

  “So how are you feeling?” she asked Marty.

  “I’m good. But how are we doing?”

  Judith forced herself not to hesitate or glance at Joel. “I think we’re on target. Richardson will get a shot at you tomorrow or the next day, and he’ll have his whole team working on how to get a rise out of you, but just repeat today’s outstanding cool and we’re fine.”

  When they had called it an evening and dispersed, Judith shoved the card key in her hotel room door and gratefully closed it behind her. Her smartphone had been buzzing with increasing urgency, but she’d suppressed the urge to pull it out until now. She kicked off the pumps that had begun to cause her real pain by the end of the afternoon, and read the screen. Three missed calls and an urgent text from her assistant.

  Judith, I’ve been trying to reach you! I know you’ve got to be exhausted but there’s a reporter for the Denver Post about to break a very important story on Regal 12 and he’s been battering our door down to get
to you.

  A weary sigh accompanied her callback to her assistant’s cell phone.

  He answered on the first ring with the name of the reporter.

  “Okay,” she said, pushing her hair back and thinking about a hot bath and delighted there was a jetted tub even though she had yet to use it. “Please call Mr. Bogosian and inform him that I will not give any interviews on or off the record until…what?”

  It was uncharacteristic for her assistant to interrupt her, but his voice was urgent.

  “No, Judith. He doesn’t want an interview. He wants to give you information he says is vital to Captain Mitchel’s case.”

  “Did he say what that information was? Could be a ploy.”

  “Only that he’s been in the courtroom every day and although he’s not taking sides, whatever it is will be extremely important to a just decision.”

  She snorted. “Who the hell talks about just decisions anymore?”

  “His words, Judith. Not mine.”

  She copied down Bogosian’s cell number and punched it in, noting the fact that he, too, answered on the first ring.

  “I understand you want to talk to me, urgently, Mr. Bogosian? This is Judith Winston.”

  “Where can we meet?”

  She sighed. “Whoa, hold your horses! I’m…it’s been a very long day, and I’m already in my hotel room…”

  “It’s not quite eight and I’m sure there’s a bar.”

  “Yes…of course there’s a bar. There’s always a bar, and I just left it, but...”

  “Please tell me the hotel and I’ll meet you in that bar in fifteen minutes.”

  “Seriously? I have no idea who you really are or why you’re even calling.”

  “Google me. I absolutely promise you it’s vitally important, what I have to tell you.”